Dr. Richard Raymond, former undersecretary of agriculture for food
safety in the United States, says chickens ought to be vaccinated against
salmonella to reduce the incidence of human food poisoning.
He says there could be a significant reduction in the current rate of
about 1.4 million cases a year in the U.S. Canada usually estimates its
incidence at about 10 per cent of the U.S. incidence, which would mean about
140,000 salmonella-related food poisonings a year.
Raymond notes that in the United Kingdom, the incidence of
salmonella food poisoning dropped from 1.6 per 1,000 people in 1996 to 0.2 per 1,000 people in
2008 and that laboratory-confirmed cases dropped from 18,000 in 1993 to 459 in
2010.
The chicken and egg farmers adopted voluntary vaccination
which led to the decline in food poisoning.
In North America, campylobacter remains the most prevalent
harmful bacteria in chicken that reaches retail counters.
